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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22727107">Stories of the Second Self: Cool Comfort</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/John_Steiner/pseuds/John_Steiner'>John_Steiner</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Alter Idem [159]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Urban Fantasy - Fandom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 16:40:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,401</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22727107</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/John_Steiner/pseuds/John_Steiner</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Dennis is on his way home when he sees a woman sitting at a bus stop in the middle of the night despite the nighttime risks brought about by Alter Idem. Dissatisfied with his life and marriage, the man also intrigued the vampire. Deciding to take the risk of being bled out, Dennis ponders whether he'd have anything to lose, and accept the vampire woman into his car.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Alter Idem [159]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1618813</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Stories of the Second Self: Cool Comfort</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>No other woman did it for me. However, stopped at a light one night I saw her. From what I could tell her hair was short, she wore a dress, and no coat to ward off the chilly air. She sat at a bus stop with one arm casually draped over the bench back and her legs cross. Not much else was visible, since the streetlight nearby was out. She was all the more intriguing, because it was close to midnight and the buses weren't running.</p><p>Yet..., I could tell she was waiting.</p><p>I abandoned my plans that moment, and any thought of driving home. Instead, I pulled around at the next light and swung back to park a few yards from the bus stop. She turned her head my way with the most laid back manner I could imagine.</p><p>At this hour people would think some horrible things about me-- or her, and they'd be right on one or two counts. For myself, because I am married, and for her, who knows. To be clear, I'm well aware that Open Feeding by vampires is a risk, and at this hour I couldn't imagine any other woman sitting on the side of the road at night unless she were eighteen hundred pounds and perfectly able to flip a car over.</p><p>Maybe this was the sign I'm a necrophiliac, though the regular kind of dead woman has no appeal to me. That I'm married to my wife should be testament to that.</p><p>"Excuse me," I said, after rolling down my passenger window. "Are you waiting for someone?"</p><p>"In a matter of speaking," she replied, and then wave her index finger in summoning toward me.</p><p>"Me?" I asked, putting my hand to my chest. "Were you waiting for me?"</p><p>"If you want," she cryptically answered.</p><p>I rolled my car forward until she was framed by my passenger window. Without a word, she stood up, stepped up to the door and got in. My overhead light was on, allowing me to see her pale complexion and solid black eyes; confirmation that she was indeed a vampire.</p><p>The woman sat there after closing the door, and my car beeped at me. I realized it was the seat belt light, and she tilted her head in soft concession before pulling the belt over and clicking it in.</p><p>"Sorry 'bout that," I apologized without knowing why. "Never know if you'll get pulled over and cited for it."</p><p>"Fair enough," she acquiesced, and then offered, "I'm Lillian."</p><p>"Dennis," I replied, wondering if I should've admitted even that much of myself, "Were you waiting for me or anyone?"</p><p>"You saw my face, right?" Lillian asked.</p><p>"Yes." I nodded struggling to keep my eyes on the road. "I know what you are. I don't know why I'm doing this, but the moment I saw you I couldn't just leave."</p><p>"Where do we go now?" Lillian sounded confused.</p><p>It occurred to me that she had some other plan in mind to feed off me and be done with it; whether that entailed draining me out completely or just to leave alive after only drinking down a couple 470's.</p><p>"Do you have a favorite spot?" I asked, imagining poorly tread park trails where it would be hard to hear a victim scream.</p><p>"Yes," she offered at first, "if you're okay with it."</p><p>"Sure," I answered with a warm smile spreading.</p><p>"You're awfully trusting," Lillian stated, "for a Beater."</p><p>"Ahh," I looked to her with my hand out in her direction. "That's a heartbeat reference, isn't it?"</p><p>I'd never heard the term before, but then again I'd never personally known any vampires. Depending on your pre-Alter Idem trope her "people" and mine either should be at endless war with each other or natural allies. Something like that.</p><p>"I don't have an EMT card," Lillian admitted, "Just so you know."</p><p>"That's okay," I replied, turning onto a street she waved at.</p><p>That's just it. This situation, where she could either lunge at me in the car or tackle me in some abandoned lot, didn't invoke any fear or trepidation whatsoever. It made her all the more interesting and, I felt, more endearing.</p><p>Lillian directed me to an abandoned diner. We got out of the car and went to the front door like it was any evening date, and I held the door for her.</p><p>"Thank you," Lillian said, an then paused.</p><p>Without irises or pupils that I could easily discern, I only suspected it was a distance gaze on her face, as though she'd done something she didn't expect to do.</p><p>It made me say something I hadn't prepared to admit. "It's not so gentlemanly when I'm cheating on my wife."</p><p>Her expression hardened in an instant, when her eyes appeared to affix onto me. "Should I admit something to you?"</p><p>"I won't push," I said, turning away in shame of what I was doing more than from the confession.</p><p>"I used to kill men like you," Lillian said it directly with a flat tone.</p><p>"Can't say I wouldn't deserve it," I agreed, wiping at a moistening tear duct with my finger.</p><p>"She's not like you, is she?" Lillian guessed, and then stepped in close to run her cold hand down the hair of my neck.</p><p>"Nope, still human," I revealed, "I'm not your average werewolf, what with this disloyalty to her."</p><p>"Let's get a seat," Lillian said, and stepped around to drape an arm across my shoulders.</p><p>Lillian picked out a table in a back corner of the unlit diner, and we sat on the same seat with her on the outside. It should trigger a sense that I'm trapped but I wanted it to be this way.</p><p>"How do you usually do this?" I asked Lillian.</p><p>"Not werewolves, for one," Lillian answered, "It gets too warm, and I wasn't one for that before I died."</p><p>I raised my brows and blinked at that, but nodded in understanding. "Neither is my wife. We hadn't been-- hadn't been intimate for...."</p><p>The words wouldn't come out, and instead I broke down. I pressed my hands into my face and sharp intake of breath came out in a silent sob.</p><p>"Did you want me to kill you?" Lillian sounded genuinely confused.</p><p>"I don't know!" I blurted out before regaining some measure of composure.</p><p>"How about I take a little, just so you know what it's going to be like," Lillian offered without hint of compassion.</p><p>I tilted my head away, thinking she was going to bite there. Instead, Lillian gently took my wrist into both of her hands and wait while searching my face.</p><p>I stared longingly into her eyes, but those obsidian voids saw into mine with a hunger. Yet, she waited for me to give the go ahead with a single nod.</p><p>That piercing into my skin was less painful than an injection. I felt her teeth working at my wrist, and I wondered if I were healing that fast. I'd not been injured in a major way since becoming a werewolf, so I had no frame of reference.</p><p>After a couple minutes I felt the coolness of the night, and I noticed that the fingernails on my other hand were bluish from what little light came in through the window.</p><p>With the sound of a wet kiss Lillian rose up from my wrist that she still held. "How was that?"</p><p>"It's chilly," I answered, having nothing else come to mind.</p><p>"I think it's about a unit and a half," Lillian suggested, "Something like that. All that four-seventy talk makes it like we're a drug culture."</p><p>"I'd been there myself," I confessed, "but that was back in high school."</p><p>"My fix in school was--," Lillian paused a long moment, "different."</p><p>"Are you going to finish?" I asked, maybe begged.</p><p>"I don't think so." Lillian turned away and laid my forearm down, as if she had no further interest. "That should hold me for a day."</p><p>"Can we do this again some time?" It was like the question was its own being escaping my will.</p><p>Lillian laid her hand on my fresh injury that had stopped bleeding. It made me feel warm in a new way. She studied her own hand, surprised by the reassuring contact she offered me.</p><p>"Yeah, I'd like that," Lillian whispered with the first smile from her I'd seen all night.</p>
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